July 03, 2012

Google Now and the Future Shock

I was following the Google announcment last week as i was at a Dell Future Cloud meeting just few blocks away from the Google event. We all started throwing idea's that was mainly inspired by the new Google Now and Google Glasses announcement. A world where were going to be allways connected, monitored and managed. We even went further to describe that world. A world where all this new devices would be planted in our body and we wouldn't even need to carry external devices like Glasses to do all that.

When we finished this session, on my way back home something felt wrong. Google Now sounds cool and scary at the same time. Is this the world that i want to be part of? more importantly is this the world that i'd like to see my kids growing to?

As i was going through this philosofical thoughts i looked around and came across an interesting book from 1972 by Alvin Toffler titled the Future Shock.

Alvin looks at the pace of innovation and the effect of that innovation on human being's. Alvin book looks at whether were really improving our productivity and quality of life with all this innovation. Here some of the interesting thoughts from his book that i thought we should all think about as when we decide to adopt all this "coo" technologies.

While a human being's capacity to adjust physically, psychologically, and socially to this torrent of change is finite and quite limited, the pace of change is increasing and expanding into more and more areas of individuals' lives. Moreover, no one is asking for these profound and endless changes; they stem more from the economic impulses of the marketplace than from any kind of consumer demand, and perhaps we should be asking to what extent this flood of innovations actually enhances our lives, and personal convenience associated with all these innovations and technological improvements are worth the social, economic, and political change that follows in its wake.

To put it simple - were becomming salves of our own inventions, unlike the old generation slaves were doing it out of free will and even willing to pay for it and get excited about it.

Comments

Google Now and the Future Shock

I was following the Google announcment last week as i was at a Dell Future Cloud meeting just few blocks away from the Google event. We all started throwing idea's that was mainly inspired by the new Google Now and Google Glasses announcement. A world where were going to be allways connected, monitored and managed. We even went further to describe that world. A world where all this new devices would be planted in our body and we wouldn't even need to carry external devices like Glasses to do all that.

When we finished this session, on my way back home something felt wrong. Google Now sounds cool and scary at the same time. Is this the world that i want to be part of? more importantly is this the world that i'd like to see my kids growing to?

As i was going through this philosofical thoughts i looked around and came across an interesting book from 1972 by Alvin Toffler titled the Future Shock.

Alvin looks at the pace of innovation and the effect of that innovation on human being's. Alvin book looks at whether were really improving our productivity and quality of life with all this innovation. Here some of the interesting thoughts from his book that i thought we should all think about as when we decide to adopt all this "coo" technologies.

While a human being's capacity to adjust physically, psychologically, and socially to this torrent of change is finite and quite limited, the pace of change is increasing and expanding into more and more areas of individuals' lives. Moreover, no one is asking for these profound and endless changes; they stem more from the economic impulses of the marketplace than from any kind of consumer demand, and perhaps we should be asking to what extent this flood of innovations actually enhances our lives, and personal convenience associated with all these innovations and technological improvements are worth the social, economic, and political change that follows in its wake.

To put it simple - were becomming salves of our own inventions, unlike the old generation slaves were doing it out of free will and even willing to pay for it and get excited about it.